Page:Scenes of Clerical Life volume 1.djvu/25

16 and gave a hymn out himself to some meeting-house tune?"

"Yes," said Mrs Hackit, stooping towards the candle to pick up a stitch, "and turned as red as a turkey-cock. I often say, when he preaches about meekness, he gives himself a slap in the face. He's like me&mdash;he's got a temper of his own."

"Rather a low-bred fellow, I think, Barton," said Mr Pilgrim, who hated the Reverend Amos for two reasons&mdash;because he had called in a new doctor, recently settled in Shepperton; and because, being himself a dabbler in drugs, he had the credit of having cured a patient of Mr Pilgrim's. "They say his father was a Dissenting shoemaker; and he's half a Dissenter himself. Why, doesn't he preach extempore in that cottage up here, of a Sunday evening?"

"Tchaw!"&mdash;this was Mr Hackit's favourite interjection&mdash;"that preaching without book's no good, only when a man has a gift, and has the Bible at his fingers' ends. It was all very well for Parry&mdash;he'd a gift; and in my youth I've heard the Ranters out o' doors in Yorkshire go on for an hour or two on end, without ever sticking fast a minute. There was one clever chap, I